BY THIS

With social mediate ablaze and blogs ablaze and emails ablaze and books ablaze we hear everyday about how badly, over the years, the church has gone about being the church in America.  The church hasn't left a great image in the minds of many people.  In fact, the church seems to be its own worst enemy when it comes to living for God in the cultures of America.  We just haven't made God look good.  We stumbled some where along the line and began to drive people away from God and His church instead of living so as to draw them to God and His church.  That's just sad, any way you spin it.  All of this has gotten me to wondering about what it means to be the church.

I wonder what it means to be Christian. 

I wonder what it means to have a personal and profound faith in God but to live out that faith with unclenched hands and with open heart. 

I wonder what it means to live in the mind and spirit of Christ. 

I wonder about how to stand for the truth of Scripture without judging people who don't see things the way we see them. 

I wonder what it means to be ambassadors of Christ instead of Defense attorneys for Christ.

I wonder how to lavish out the grace that has been lavished on us who claim Christ as Savior and Lord. 

I wonder what it means to speak the truth of Scripture but to do so with weeping hearts, baptized in the outlandish grace of God, instead of alienating, by our words and actions, those who do not love Christ and who have no heart for God.

I have always loved the heart of Paul as he went about his calling to reach people for Christ.  I Corinthians 9:19-23 The Message paraphrase of Eugene Peterson comes to us this way.  It is the apostle Paul's testimony.  I think we can learn something from it. 

Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn’t just want to talk about it; I wanted to be in on it!

"To be in on it" with God and His people requires a heart yielded to God.  Jesus taught us to pray, "Your kingdom come.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10).  Truth is, if we are to pray these words then we must live these words out, also.  Living for God, as ambassadors of Christ, is fulfilled only as the people of God take on the job description outlined by God.  We are not here to debate people into a relationship with Christ.  We are not here to defend the reality of God.  We are not here to throw the Scriptures into the faces of those among whom we live.  We are not here to arm wrestle people into submission to Christ.  We are not here to win arguments.  We are here to be the ambassadors of the one who "emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race" (Charles Wesley).

In John 13:34-35 Jesus gave us our marching orders.  The order from the One for whom we are ambassadors is "Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.  By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 

"By this."  That's it.  Just, "By this."  "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."  Argument doesn't prove our faith.  Debate doesn't prove our faith.  Picketing doesn't prove our faith.  Preaching doesn't prove our faith.  We need these things from time to time, but when we exercise them we had better drench every word, every act, every attitude, every nuance, every tweet, every Facebook post, and every movement in love, Jesus' love, the love that Jesus expressed on the cross of Calvary.  The apostle Paul said it succinctly in First Corinthians chapter 13, "If I…do not have love…I am nothing…I gain nothing" (see verses 1-3).

May we live in the spirit of the love of Jesus.  In an age of much skepticism may we be known for the love of God in us.  People may or may not come to the Christ we love so much, but if they don't may it not be because when they looked at us our lives turned them off to God.  Instead, may our lives be a fragrant aroma of Christ.